ABSTRACT
This chapter confronts Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts with the research participants’ narratives to examine the ways in which people’s dispositions, perceptions, and practices are shaped by different types and amounts of capital. It explores how gaps in capital between people could be affecting the responses of practitioners to young offenders and their parents in professional interactions on the ground. The chapter builds on a Bourdieusian understanding of habitus as ingrained in childhood experiences and internalised subconsciously, unifying dispositions, perceptions, and behaviour across social fields, so that people of similar backgrounds share a practical sense and differ in this respect from individuals of diverse class belonging. It explains why – in their interactions with professionals – young people and their parents might be responded to differently according to their social class and possibly directed on diverse pathways as a consequence. The chapter also exposes the need to disentangle how class distinction on one side and differentiation based on factors beyond class background on the other shape professional interactions.
